Long Beach: part 1
by thursdaysisters
Summary: Sam and Dean depart from Bobby's sick room to investigate the contents of Dick Roman's green folders.
1. Chapter 1

They came to a crossroads, and Dean pulled the car over to wipe snow off the road sign.

"Are we close?" asked Sam sleepily, his right cheek red from pressing against a rolled-up jacket.

"Another hour I'm guessing," he said, shutting the door, "I'll want to switch out our plates before we hit town though."

Sam looked down at the map. The folders Bobby had stolen pointed to two cities, and Cleveland seemed the best candidate for trouble. A new business venture of Dick Roman's, Long Beach Inc., had made its headquarters there, though for what kind of business, neither of them could tell.

"Okay then," said Sam, "Should be some houses up ahead, we can switch out while it's dark. You want me to drive?"

Dean blew on his fingers to get some warmth back into them. "Nah. Keep an eye out for something to eat though. Something low-profile."

"Should've snatched some hospital food while we had the chance."

Dean said nothing, putting the car into drive and heading north. Sam closed his eyes again, relieved that Dean felt normal enough to feel hungry, though not normal enough to pick a fight over Bobby.

Farm houses became less scattered, and soon they were in a suburb, new homes studded with blinking Christmas lights. Most of the driveways were empty.

"Everyone's gone for Thanksgiving," said Dean, "Feel like squatting?"

"I feel like stretching," said Sam, his arms over his head, elbows digging into the roof, "I swear I lose a half inch for every month I spend sleeping in this thing."

"Well, no more," said Dean, climbing out and stowing a 9mm in his jacket, "Tonight it's feather beds and central heating."

"Just cut the burglar alarm this time," said Sam, "That last rottweiler nearly gave me a vasectomy."

Dean should have laughed. Should have responded with "you turned into a girl years ago" or something equally childish. But winter was coming, and nothing seemed funny these days.

While Dean took to the alarm system, Sam tried to make sense of Roman's green files. Spreadsheets and memos took up most of them, but the language was too vague, it could be describing anything. Accounting records covered everything from publishing to cafeteria food to prison staffing.

He went back to the one section he felt comfortable with: a series of memos between Roman's office and a judge. Was Roman trying to spring an associate out of jail?

A flashlight tapped against the window. "Are you lost?"

Sam jumped, and then breathed again when he saw it was just a woman, a hugely pregnant one, in a lilac house-dress. "I'm...no, my brother should be back in a minute."

She smiled. "Oh, he's helping you find the dog?"

Sam smiled back at her. Searching for a lost pet had always been a ready excuse whenever either of them had been caught trespassing. "Yes ma'am, is he inside?"

The lack of a car was due to her husband taking the mini-van to the grocery store for more snacks. "We're having the baby shower while everyone's off work," she explained as she led him inside, "And we don't have a thing in the house to feed my guests."

"Congratulations." he said absently, giving Dean a look that said they should hit the road, but Dean brightened at the mention of food.

"Well if we can be of ANY help," said Dean with his most debonair smile, "I do know my way around a grill."

"Oh I couldn't possibly..." she said, just as the phone rang. "Oh, it's my husband, please, um..." she said, waving her hand vaguely at the sofa before walking toward the kitchen.

"Wow, she's trusting," remarked Sam in a low voice, "Shouldn't we get going?"

"Dude, I'm starving," said Dean, "Can't we at least wait around for sandwiches?"

"It's a baby shower. That's usually code for 'no penises allowed', what do you expect her to say when she sees a total stranger eating her guests' food?"

"I expect to be serving up mini frittatas to a bunch of desperate housewives with huge breasts."

"Those women are lactating."

"Hey man, I don't judge."

"Hold up." said Sam, as he eyed the spare phone on the desk and noted the ID caller. "Long Beach."

He was about to say more, when the hostess made a little noise despair in the kitchen, followed by frantic opening of cabinets and drawers.

"Everything okay ma'am?" asked Sam.

She walked out, a tight smile on her face. "My husband was called back to the office. He has the car, and I have nothing, NOTHING, to feed people."

"Well it can't be that bad." said Dean, not giving up hope of a free lunch. He opened her freezer and smiled. "You've got tons of ground beef, and by the looks of your fridge you've got buns and cheese. Problem solved."

She chewed on a nail. "Maybe."

"Maybe?" he said, his eyebrows shot up, "Ma'am, hamburgers got me thru worse disasters than this, how many people are you expecting?"

Over the next hour, pregnant women trickled in, all connected thru a local yoga class, and the house filled with the sounds of gossip and spoons in tea mugs. Sam shot Dean an impatient look, but Dean was too happy scraping patties off the skillet to notice.

"Her husband works for Long Beach," hissed Sam, one eye on the party, "Don't you think it's a little weird?"

"Mfa fehg ferf?" replied Dean, his mouth full of food.

"I was watching the women as they came in the driveway," Sam continued, "None of them brought their keys with them. Those cars are all sitting unlocked, their purses on the seat."

"Therg freffin derf." said Dean.

"I doubt it. No one's that trusting," said Sam darkly, "We need to find out where the Long Beach office is located. We'll break in after dark, scout the offices for information, find something, ANYTHING, that helps clarify these documents of Dick Roman's."

"Darfa mumberfer?" asked Dean, offering up a fresh burger.

"Don't you ever stop eating?"

Dean shrugged, and wiped grease on his jeans before picking up a small pyramid of burgers to take to the living room. A chorus of delighted sighs preceded him as he rounded the corner.

Sam rolled his eyes, and glanced at the trash can where Dean had thrown the plastic wrap from the freezer. The logo read "Deli Deluxe" with a picture of a cartoon pig, but it was the newspaper underneath that caught his eye. Plucking it from the trashcan, he read the headline: CLEVELAND MAYOR ENACTS CONVICT LABOR ACT.

He scanned the article. He'd heard about similar legislation going on down south, where migrant labor was slowly being outlawed and replaced with prison workers, but the tone here was a little more...sympathetic?

"In this economy, the penal system cannot be supported indefinitely," a local judge was quoted, "Part of the government's job is making sure there is a place for every citizen, even the ones who refuse to be governed." The article went on to applaud the mayor's decision for finding hundreds of jobs at the local plant for men at the state penitentiary.

"How long have you been in the neighborhood?" Sam asked the hostess. Dean was seated between two women who, for once, were more in love with his cooking than him, but he didn't seem disappointed.

"Oh my husband was transferred here pretty recently," she said, sucking grease off her fingers, "It's really the best place to raise a family."

"I can imagine." he said, as a woman in a checked shirt got up awkwardly to make her way into the kitchen.

"The schools are really good too," said a woman who had finished one sandwich and was bending over Dean to grab a second, her pendulous breasts inches from his nose, "I was reading how the Long Beach diet is a big deal in China, and that's why the kids there are so smart."

"The...what?" said Sam, incredulous. He could hear the freezer door open, and a soft squelchy noise as something hit the countertop.

"The meat does something with cell cohesion in the fetus' brain," said another woman, who made hand gestures as if drawing chemical formulas in the air, "It makes the synapses do...stuff, and that's why they have such high SAT math scores."

"And this zip code has the lowest violent crime rate in the state," said one woman, "They haven't had an arrest all year."

Dean tore his eyes away from the breasts next to him, wondering if "lactating" was a lesbian thing, and asked, "Why's that?"

Mama Checked Shirt walked out of the kitchen, a bowl of raw meat sitting atop her belly as she stuffed a great fistful of it into her mouth. A lock of hair had gotten stuck in her mouth, and she sucked the blood off it before daintily tucking it behind her ear.

"Because they ate them all." said Sam.

"Dude, what are you talking about?" said Dean, all boobs forgotten.

"He's right," said the hostess, looking him in the eye, though clearly embarrassed at her bloody guest, and she fidgeted with a paper napkin.

"That prison is right behind our homes," said Checked Shirt, blood weeping thru the cracks of her fingers, "Our door's been kicked in twice this year already."

"When they let those cons out on parole, they could be anywhere," said Boobs, "Anyone. Street sweepers. Dish washers." she said, tears suddenly springing to her eyes. "School bus drivers."

"It's not right," said another woman, "Our children have a right to be safe."

"But you can't eat people!" said Sam in alarm.

"They're not people," said the largest woman in the room, her belly so swollen that she might have been a watermelon on stilts. Under the surface of her tight cotton shirt, several pairs of feet kicked against her skin. "They're murderers. Rapists. Child molesters."

"Monsters." said the women in unison.

"Uuuumm..." said Dean, lifting himself off the couch very slowly, "What have I been eating?"

The hostess blinked at him, recognition in her eyes. "Wait...haven't I seen you two before?"

The air went still as all eyes narrowed in on the brothers, and Sam realized what conclusion they had come to, too late. "Wait, ladies, we only LOOK like those bank robbers-"

A skillet came down on the back of his head, and he fell face first into a pile of tissue-wrapped onesies.


	2. Chapter 2

"Sam? whispered Dean.

Sam opened his eyes to blackness, a zipper pressing close to his face. "Dean? Where are we?"

"I don't know, my hands are tied. Can you see anything?"

"No, I think I'm in a...a garment bag."

"Hold on, I think the zipper got caught on the inside, I'm gonna open the top and see what's around." he said, as his teeth worked a little opening over his face. "Oh crap."

"What is it?" asked Sam.

The zipper over him parted, and he was surrounded by faces framed against industrial lighting, machinery booming and whirring in the background. Hands stripped away the outer wrapping and hoisted them into the air, until Sam and Dean were hanging by their ankles from meat hooks, their heads inches from a conveyor belt that was slimy with other men's blood.

The Ohio State Penitentiary had changed a lot in the last year. Instead of orange jumpsuits, the convicts were naked, their heads tossed down a garbage chute, their bodies divided into quarters, and their organs stored in separate containers as delicately as ripe fruit. The convicts who were allowed to work the assembly line looked on blankly, and Dean noticed that TVs were crammed into every corner to distract the workers from the livestock.

i"Omega-3s are a family of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids that are essential nutrients for fetal health and development," said the perky pregnant woman in the TV ad, "However, the standard Western diet is greatly lacking in Omega 3's, which is where the Long Beach supplements can really do some good..."/i

"Ah, Mister Winchesters." said a male voice. A suited man bent sideways to look at Sam, who was now seeing everyone upside down.

"I know you?" asked Sam.

"Mister Roman sent me to oversee the plant," said the suit, "He'll be happy to know you two dropped in."

"What's with the factory?" asked Dean, "Too lazy to make your own Manwich?"

"Mister Roman noted the expense of the American penal system, and saw that, by depressing the unit price, he could take advantage of the economy of scale."

Dean opened his mouth for a witty retort, but none came. "Sam, what the hell'd he say?"

"Prisoners cost a lot of money to keep alive," said Sam, "It's cheaper to eat them and sell them to the public as a health fad."

"It's called reciprocity," the suit said, poking Dean in the stomach and watching him sway on the meat hook, "The citizens don't have to look both ways when they cross, and we get your livers."

"I ain't your hot hors d'oeuvre." said Dean, smiling back, though the effect was somewhat marred by the fact that he'd gone purple from all the blood rushing to his face.

"Whatever," said the suit before turning away to leave, "Next I see your ass, you'll be paste on a cracker."

They waited a minute for him to walk out the door, before Dean began to seriously panic, his hands fumbling at the zip-ties on his ankles. "Sam!" hissed Dean, "Plan! Now!"

"Why me?"

"Cuz I can't get to my gun. It's in my jacket, if you can get to it..."

Sam looked up at the meat hook. The point was not especially sharp, but he found that looping the zip-tie over the curve and pulling with all his weight stressed his bonds enough to let him wriggle loose.

"Hey!" said a worker, his arms bloody up to the elbows. Sam punched him, his body swinging backwards from the force.

"To me, Sam!" said Dean, working on his restraints. Sam swung sideways, his hand grasping at empty air as he tried to grab at Dean's jacket.

"You're too far!" said Sam.

More workers were coming for them now, young men aged by violence and abandonment, as a commercial for Long Beach Sirloin played in the background.

"Stand back!" warned Dean, as he got his hands on his 9mm, "I've got enough bullet for all of you!"

It was a bluff, but he hoped it would give Sam enough time to free his ankles. On the TVs, a bombshell blonde opened the hood of a red sports car, licking her lips as she threw a raw, bloody steak onto the engine block.

"We're not cons," said Dean, "We're just passing thru town. We don't belong here." On the TV, the meat sizzled and popped on the steaming engine.

"They belong here more than anyone," said a woman's voice from a high platform, "They killed all those people in the banks."

On the TV, the bombshell bit into the half-raw steak, blood dripping down her cleavage.

"They're monsters," said their hostess, one hand placed beatifically on her swollen belly, the other hand at the assembly line control panel, "And we eat monsters for breakfast."

Sam and Dean collapsed onto the conveyor belt, the meat hooks disengaged, and suddenly they were whisked away down a dark chute, the air foul with the smell of cooked flesh. 


	3. Chapter 3

"Sam, hold onto the sides!" Dean shouted, and pushing with all their strength, they shoved the soles of their boots against the sides of the tunnel, slowing their descent until they were almost at the end of passage. Below them was a slurry of hair and teeth and gristle, mechanical blades grinding everything into a hot paste.

"Can you see down?" asked Sam.

"No," said Dean, sounding vaguely sick, "Don't think I want to."

"Can you see a wait out?"

"There's a foothold to your left, if you let me get over, I think I can get us to that airvent."

Slowly the boys crawled over each other, careful not to breathe through their nose or think too hard about the sucking noise below. The vent was surprisingly cold, a draft pulling upwards to an opening in the roof that a cat couldn't hope to climb. Behind them, Sam could swear the vortex was calling his name.

"Keep going," said Sam, contorting his shoulders in the claustrophobic passage, "I can hear water pipes parallel to us, we can probably follow this all the way to the boiler room."

It was a hard crawl, partly from the lack of space to move in and partly because men passed below them every minute or so, the static of walkie-talkies punctuated by angry replies. Sam strained to hear them, ignoring the voice that itched in the back of his brain.

"Sir, I'm sorry, she just released the bodies-" said a quavering voice.

"They were hog-tied and hung upside down in an abattoir, surrounded by hundreds of men!" said a younger man, the Leviathan who'd taunted them earlier.

"One of them had a gun. Sir, my wife is pregnant, she thought they were those bank robbers from the TV..."

"Whatever, lock down the exits and make sure all the guard towers have at least three men apiece."

"This used to be a prison, they're not going to get out that easily."

"Really? You know what it says on the back of the shithouse door in Hell?"

"Um, I wouldn't-"

"FOR A GOOD TIME CALL DEAN WINCHESTER. If they can Houdini the Devil, they can break out of here. Now get your men in place, Warden, before I change my mind and turn your wife into an Irish stew." he said, as his footsteps trailed away.

"I got something," whispered Dean, feeling in the darkness for a seam in the steel, "Here. Got something I can unscrew this with?"

Sam fished in his pockets, but most of his tools had been left in the car trunk. His only "lockpick" was a dime he'd refused to give to Dean earlier, to buy gas station licorice. Likely Dean would still whine about it once they were out of this mess.

Dean unscrewed the door plate, and then cursed when he tried to pry it off.

"Dean, what's wrong?"

"It's...frozen shut."

"Scoot back." said Sam, and angling his boot against the edge, he kicked the plate off one side, enough for Dean to wrench it off the rest of the way.

The room hummed, a long row of industrial cooling fans lining one concrete wall. Feeling in the dark, they followed the walls to a huge insulated door that was locked from the other side.

"Shoot the lock?" whispered Dean.

"And meet the search party in a dark room with one exit?"

"Point." said Dean, turning to head back toward the vent and try another room, when a soft voice came from the darkness.

"...pleeeeease..."

Sam started, not sure whether it was real or not, but Dean didn't notice. He kept his gun out, his left hand held in front of him. "Watch the door, Sammy." he said.

While Sam leaned against the door, happy for the cold as a distraction, Dean made his way across the room. His hand scraped at long figures wrapped in plastic, bunched so close together that he felt like a kid hiding in a walk-in closet filled with garment bags. Pushing them aside, he couldn't help but notice the feel of faces against his, noses and cheekbones and ears, puppets with their strings cut.

"...pleeeeease..."

Following the voice, his hand found a bearded jaw, the mouth twitching under his touch. "Sammy, I got a live one here," he said, hoping his voice didn't carry outside to the hallway, "He's tied up, come give me a hand."

But Sam did not hear him, and no amount of digging into his left hand would make the angel go away.

"You look like you've seen a ghost." said Lucifer, as Sam's breath curled in a warm fog.


	4. Chapter 4

Dean gently lowered the old man to the floor, wishing he had a light to see by.

"...pleeeease..." whispered the old man, "...just let me die..."

"How long you been in here?" whispered Dean, cocking his head toward the meat locker door to see if the search party had gotten to this part of the prison yet.

"Early this morning...refused to work the assembly line." he said, his breath whistling thru a gash in his neck.

Dean's hand came away from the convict's neck, tacky with dried blood, and he closed his eyes against the remembered smell of another dying old man. "Sammy," he whispered, "Get over here, I need your shirt."

The old con gave a chuckle, which Sam seemed able to translate. "Dean, he'll bleed out soon," said Sam, unzipping his jacket, "The freezing temperature's probably the only thing that's kept him alive this long, a compress won't do much good."

Dean ignored this. "You've been working the abattoir since the prison was converted?"

He felt the old man nod. "...cleaned...the killing room...truck out the blood each night..."

"Wait, you're a driver?" asked Sam.

"You still got the keys on you?" asked Dean.

The old man tried to answer, his fingers fluttering in the restraints. Dean took it as a yes, and began to search his clothes.

"Dude's got a lot of keys on him." said Dean.

"Any office keys?" asked Sam.

"Maybe, can't tell in the dark."

"If we can get into the main office we need to take a look at their files. Roman's spreadsheets said something about Lake Erie, something about a sleeping agent in the water..."

"Dude, we're being hunted," Dean said, suddenly remembering to keep his voice down, "Being hunted by a small army of ex-cons who just spent the last year turning their cellmates into sausage patties. We need to find this guy's truck and get the hell out."

"It'll only take a minute, we need to find out Roman's plan for this place. If he's set up human slaughterhouses in other cities-"

"-then we'll figure it out when we're not lost in a supermax prison with one gun between us."

"But Roman's files kept talking about Lake Erie, whatever's going down is happening here."

"...Erie..." the old man croaked.

The brothers stoppped arguing long enough to lean in amd listen. "Say again?" asked Dean.

"Sleeper..." the old man said, his voice beginning to slur.

"Roman's phone logs talked about a sleeping agent in the Great Lakes." said Sam speculatively.

"Oh right, who'd wanna roofie Canadians?" Dean quipped.

"Sleeper...in the water." he whispered, struggling for air.

"A sleeper," said Sam, running a hand thru his hair as he considered this new piece of information, "There's lore about Leviathans in the ocean, I wonder if...Dean, we have to bust into that office-"

"-assuming the Leviathans don't run into us first-" Dean interrupted, though he was distracted by the old man, his lungs rattling with blood. He put a hand in the old man's grip, and felt callused fingers squeeze his, as if giving him permission. The memory of a hospital room swam in the dark, tubes and oxygen tanks and daily humiliations, and Dean wondered if Bobby would plead him for a mercy killing too.

"-grab their records on Lake Erie, and make a break for the exit." Sam finished.

"Yeah, sounds good" said Dean, holding his hand out to him, "Your shirt."

"Dean-"

"Sam, I...I need to do something." said Dean, steeling himself.

"...What are you gonna do?"

He put a hand on Dean's shoulder, but it was slapped away.

"Go check the door, I thought I heard someone outside."

Sam hesitated, listening to Dean fold the shirt into a thick pad, and then did as he was told.

"Do know what makes me happy?" asked Lucifer, leaning against the wall as Sam walked back across the meat locker, "The thought that Dean will do whatever he's about to do that old man, and still be able to enter Heaven. It's what makes him a hero in this life, and such a great torturer in Hell."

Sam could make out the sound of Dean asking a final question, and then pressing the shirt into the man's face.

"He knows his work is just." the angel whispered, as if anyone else could hear him.

Sam clenched his teeth, refusing to reply.

"I'd worry about your brother," Lucifer continued, "My brother Michael loved being in control. When the end came, Michael had lost a lot-his Father, his brothers, his mission. But he always controlled his own death."

Someone struggled in the dark, but whether it was Dean or the old man, Sam could not tell.

"And really, Michael took comfort in the idea that, if he had to die, it would be at the hands of a loved one."

"You're not real." Sam whispered, pressing into his left hand.

"My brother hated seeing me in Hell," Lucifer continued, "Better to put me out of my misery."

Sam balled the heels of his hands against his eyes, stars bursting until he could no longer stand the pain.

"And some day, Dean will feel the same way about you."

"Go away."

"Sam."

"You're not real."

"Sammy."

He looked up. A small chink of light illuminated Dean's face.

"I got the door unlocked, let's go." he said.

"...Gimme my shirt." said Sam.

Dean did so, and then looked away, as if to check that the coast was clear. "I had to do it." he said finally, "He begged me."

"Whatever." said Sam, inspecting the blood on the fabric.

"He...he was asking for it."

Sam looked up at Lucifer, the angel shaking his head as if to say, Nothing ever changes.

"Let's get out of here," said Sam, shucking his jacket back on, "You look...cold."


	5. Chapter 5

Dean tapped his hand nervously against the steering wheel of the (stolen) delivery truck, eyes glancing up every now and then to see if the men in the prison guard tower had noticed him yet. "Come on Sammy, shake a leg." he said under his breath.

After what seemed like an eternity, Sam emerged from the main entrance, dressed in a police uniform and carrying a stack of folders under one arm.

"You get it?" asked Dean as he put the truck into drive.

"Yeah, I got something," said Sam, looking hesitantly at the prison gate and then at the dashboard, "When was the last time you drove a big rig?"

"Did it enough when I was with Dad," said Dean, pulling his gun out onto his lap, "So you wanna ride shotgun or tell me what Dick Roman's up to?"

"The documents are pretty dense," Sam admitted, "But it looks like they're planning a drop-off at several locations, some time over the next few months."

"What kind of drop-off?" said Dean, as he sped up to collide with the security gate.

"He basically took the entire roster of the Ohio Penitentiary and assigned each man a date and six-digit number. All the dates are coming up soon, and the numbers..."

"Coordinates?" asked Dean, cursing as the truck made contact with steel.

"Has to be," Sam continued, licking his thumb to turn a page, "Five of the numbers show up again, one in Wisconsin, one near Chicago, I think one of these is upstate New York."

"So all near the Great Lakes." said Dean, picking up his gun to aim at a guard tower as he drove past.

"Looks like, they've got about three hundred men signed up for a drop-off today, though the matching coordinates, 28-36-50, are..."

"Are what?" asked Dean, ducking his head as machine gunfire peppered the truck, smashing the driver-side mirror.

"Appear to be in New Dehli."

"Man I an NOT flying to India, I hate musicals." he said, sticking his head out the window just long to fire a shot at a police car whose sirens had begun to wail.

"It might mean something else, for all we know it's a star listing from the Astronomical Catalogue, or a hexadecimal color code..."

"Or the measurements for that chick from the 'Fat-Bottomed Girls' album." said Dean, brushing broken glass out of his seat. When Sam gave him a look, Dean said, "What, you never listened to Queen? Dude, I thought you were educated."

"Whatever. So, head for Lake Erie?"

"That seems to be our best option for now."

"Where's our tail?" Sam asked, realizing how quiet it had become.

"The first one got wedged in the guard rail after I shot his windshield, and I'm guessing the others piled into him."

Sam turned to look outside the window, perplexed. "Still, you'd think they'd have sent out an APB on us when we snuck out earlier today, where's the helicopters? Where's the roadblocks?"

Dean flexed his fingers on the steering wheel. "Must be our lucky day."

Sam sat back against his seat, and started when he saw Lucifer in the rearview mirror. Lucifer, in the driver's seat, in Dean's clothes.

"You wanna talk about what happened back there?" Dean asked awkwardly, though it came out of Lucifer's face.

"I was gonna ask you the same thing."

"You looked kind of twitchy for a minute, before I sprung us out of the meat locker."

The sound of the dead convict came back to Sam, his labored breathing from an old wound, and the sound of Dean asking a question before he brought the cloth down over his face.

"I meant to ask you, I mean, that old con wasn't gonna live much longer," said Sam carefully, "Why kill him?"

"The dude was strung up like Monster Salt Pork in an unlit, unheated room, fifty of his friends shrink-wrapped next to him," Dean said angrily, "No one should die like that."

"But he'd been bleeding for hours, either he was gonna die in another hour or, or if you thought we ought to, we could have gone back for him after the job and-"

"And what, sneak him past the Leviathans? We were lucky to get out in one piece, and neither of us have a hole in our necks."

"But Dean-"

"Nuh-uh, it wouldn't have happened. I don't care what he did to get into prison, man needs his dignity," said Dean finally, "And I wasn't letting him die alone."

"Why do you care all of a sudden?" asked Sam, as Lucifer's eyes followed his in the reflection.

Dean hesitated. "I had to see if I could do it. If I could...it's a mercy, man, you see someone you care about, someone who's too broken to live..."

Dean was thinking of Bobby. In the mirror, Dean was pointing his gun at Sam's head.

"So you think mercy is the best medicine for some people?" asked Sam darkly.

"I think some people are never gonna get better," said Dean, his voice cracking, "And if they could ask, they'd want it to be over sooner than later."

Sam looked at the sky, not trusting himself to respond. "Storm's coming, though if we keep going east we may avoid it."

"I don't think we have that option." said Dean, pointing ahead of him. There, talking to a policeman on the shore of Lake Erie, was the Leviathan that had taunted them earlier that day, still in his expensive suit and gesticulating angrily.

"You wanna tail him?" asked Sam.

"Let's see what he does," said Dean, "So you're sure none of the coordinates in the file match with this location?"

"Well the old man did say something was 'asleep' in the lake, it wouldn't surprise me if the Leviathans had knowledge of some Big Bad in the area."

"But where are the three hundred guys that are slated for today? What are they gonna do out there, Ice Capades?"

"Hey hey, he's getting back in his car." said Sam. Sure enough, the Leviathan stepped into his white sedan and waved off the policeman, who drove off in the opposite direction.

"Crap, he's driving across the ice." said Dean, wiping sweat on his jeans, nervous about the prospect of driving an eighteen-wheeler with no chains on the tires.

"They must be meeting somewhere in the middle of the lake," said Sam, "It's pretty thick this time of the year, we should be okay so long as we avoid dark patches."

"And don't crash." Dean added, eyeing the snowstorm that hung over the frozen wasteland ahead of them.

Following the man took up the next twenty minutes, which stretched into infinity as they contemplated every crack the ice made in their wake, lost in the white-out with only the Leviathan's brake lights as their compass.

"Crap, I lost him," said Dean, "Did he cut off his lights?"

"He was right there, maybe the snow will thin out." said Sam, wiping condensation off of the inside of the window.

"And we're almost out of gas," said Dean, tapping the meter, "If this guy doesn't turn around soon, we need to head back, I am NOT walking ten miles in this crap, I haven't eaten anything since those burgers we had earlier."

"Dean, that was human flesh, I'm surprised you've even managed to keep it down."

"I THOUGHT it was cow, it's not my fault it turned into something else in my stomach. It's like an instantiation thing, ya know, like with Catholics?"

"That's TRANSsubstantiation, which is completely different, and you're still gross."

"Why ya gotta hate on my cooking?"

"It's not-"

A shot rang out, and the truck lurched right a little, and then left a lot, until the whole world seemed to tilt ninety degrees. Sam only remembered the sound of glass cracking as the truck skidded across the lake, and of Lucifer's face in the mirror before it broke off and hit him in the head.

He came too about a minute later, his hand clutching the door handle as he struggled to free himself from the seatbelt. "Dean." he rasped, his left hand patting Dean's shoulder.

"Dean, wake up, I think someone shot the front tire. I don't know how to work the radio on the truck, we gotta send out an SOS."

Snow had blocked the windshield heavily enough that he couldn't see his brother's face, only a dim outline of a man slumped against the door. But he could hear the flow of water.

"Dean, get up," said Sam, clambering across the cabin, "We cracked the ice, we need to get out, now!" And pulling his brother's right arm over the back of his neck, he kicked open his own door, and the hauled the both of them out into the storm.

"I was wondering if you two would make it," said the Leviathan, his car a few hundred feet away, "No matter, you still managed to make it here on time."

"What are you talking about?" said Sam, his body already aching with cold, not liking where this conversation was going.

"What did you think you were driving?"

Sam turned his head, and noticed something for the first time.

"U-283650," he said, miserably, as the truck began to sink into the lake, "The license plate."

"Were you any good at math in school?" asked the Leviathan, his gun twirling at the end of his forefinger, "If a standardized shipping container is eight feet by nine feet by twenty feet, and the human heart weighs three hundred grams, how many human sacrifices does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a sleeping elder god?"

"All those men who were slated for today..." said Sam, flinching as the ice boomed one last time, the trunk slipping beneath the surface.

"Well, we didn't need ALL of them, as you can imagine, just the pink parts." said the Leviathan, grinning, "You didn't think you could break out of a penitentiary THAT easily? In broad daylight, with your mugshots on the back of every cop's bathroom door?"

Sam glowered at him, shivering too hard to come up with an intelligent reply.

"You're not gonna stop this," said the Leviathan, turning to look at the sky as if it had started the mess in the first place, which was true in a way, "We've been planning this since the dawn of man, and your days are numbered."

He turned back to Sam to continue what might have been an empowering speech on man's role in the universe, but stopped short as Sam leveled the handgun at him. "That's make two of us."

"Bullet's not gonna slow me down."

"The water will."

He opened his mouth to speak, too slow on the uptake, when Sam shot out the ice at his feet, and all three men crashed into the water.

Sam grabbed onto Dean's collar with his right hand, keeping his other on the edge of the ice, satisfied to hear that the Leviathan had never troubled himself with swimming lessons. Down in the dark, something shifted, or slithered, and the water asked him something, but he wasn't sure what.

It was a hard climb this time, with the added weight of their sodden clothes and the shock that would set in soon if he didn't move, but he managed to drag them back to firmer ground (as it were) and limp back to the white car.

The snow was a fury now, the wind cutting straight through as Sam stripped himself and his brother down to boxers, and shoved them both in the backseat of the car, turning the car's heater up to full blast, and stealing a black trenchcoat from the front seat as a blanket.

Dean had gone completely blue, so Sam laid leaned against the door, his knees crooked, and sat Dean's back against him, hoping the skin-to-skin contact would raise his core temperature.

"Dean, it's time to wake up," he said, wrapping his arms around his brother's chest and rubbing some circulation into his own hands, "There's enough gas in this car that we can wait out the storm and heat up, but you need to wake up."

The windows were completely frosted over, but through the white, he saw a shadow in the distance, walking toward the car as slowly as a bad dream. He somehow knew it wasn't the Leviathan he had to worry about.

"Dean, wake up." he said, more urgently this time.

He pressed two fingers against Dean's neck, but was too numb to notice whether the pulse was there or not. The shadow moved a little closer, and Sam pressed his cheek against his brother's head, rocking him back and forth.

"Dean, please, he'll be here soon, he's coming for me."

The shape of an arm reached out, and the snow was brushed away from the window, a beautiful smile peering in to look.

"I'm not going back." Sam whispered, as he spied Lucifer in the mirror, seated, once again, in the driver's seat.

"Your brother's not going to get better," said the angel, "You need to let him go."

"He's just...cold." Sam said angrily, clinging to his brother protectively.

"It's out of your control Sam," he said.

Suddenly the car door was torn away, snow stinging him, as he beheld...himself.

"Don't worry," his other self said, the wind tangling the hair on his head like a dark halo, "It's warm where he's going."

The angel stretched out his hand over Dean's chest, and as Sam looked down, a brilliant bead of light rose from his brother, shivering in the air like a sleeping bird, straining towards Lucifer's hand.

"No," said Sam, tears in his eyes, "He's a good man."

"He killed someone today," said the angel, "I'm sorry, I don't make the rules."

"No, please, no." he said, as the tears fell into Dean's hair.

"He's better off with me," he said, the pearl of light settling in his hand, "He's my brother now."

"He's all I have left," Sam said, searching his own face for some shred of empathy, "We don't deserve this."

"Mercy, as a rule, is undeserved," said the angel, as he cradled the light close to his chest, as if afraid to awaken it.

"You call this mercy?"

But Lucifer paid him no mind, turning as if to leave.

"I'll come back for him!" Sam shouted, "I'll find a way!"

The angel looked up, and suddenly Sam realized what it was that Dean had asked the old man right before crushing the life out of him, what it was the dark had asked as he considered going down with his brother into the black waters. "Are you sure?"

Dean's body erupted in flames. The pain was blinding, and Sam could feel his skin blister as he clung to his brother, unwilling to believe that the fire was real. "No no no no..." he said, banging his head against the back of the window in the hope that the pain would clear his head.

The shadow walked away, growing dim in the snowstorm, as the wind carried away Sam's screams. The car quickly filled with the stench of burnt flesh, and swirling in his panic and terror was the single thought, "I can't put his soul back without his body. I have to hold on, if I let go, the storm will scatter his bones and he will be lost."

And so he held on, crying into the heat that seared his hair, his skin, feeling his brother burn down like a candle in his arms.

"Dean," he whispered, though the wind was so loud that he could barely hear himself, "You have to wake up. You have to wake up, or the devil will take you away."

He watched Dean's face crisp and blacken, the cheeks giving way to expose teeth, the nose becoming a chasm between his eye sockets. He thought of Jessica, and his mother, and wondered one one hand if he would see them after all this was over, and on the hand what he would need to do, what awful act against humanity, to get into Hell and bring back the only man who never deserved to go there in the first place.

"...Sam."

Sam looked down. The car was whole, the storm still raged, but Dean was still perfectly still. Had he imagined it?

"...Sam."

His lips had moved, barely. For a moment, Sam noticed the gun near at hand, and wondered what kind of man would Dean be without his soul, what sort of man would walk out of here with nothing to anchor his actions but the bitterness he felt towards life in general.

"Dean," he said carefully, "How do you feel?"

"Feel like I wanna kill someone." Dean said hoarsely.

Dean's words seemed muffled, stuffed with cotton as the snow piled onto the car, and Sam broke out into a sweat despite the cold.

"The bastards stole my pants." Dean continued.

Sam barked a laugh. "What are you talking about, it's a perfect day for sunbathing."

"Screw you Miss Mary Sunshine, you ever tell anyone. ANYONE. Outside of this car, I'm gonna shave a landing strip down your head while you sleep."

"See if I ever save you from hypothermia again."

"Save me from your aftershave, what's this crap called, 'Fierce'?"

And the wind howled over the little car, the land white and free of shadows.


End file.
